


give back a hungrier stare

by owlvsdove



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 03 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 12:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4919659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/pseuds/owlvsdove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How she gets off that planet is part fluke, part fate. </p>
<p>SEASON THREE SPOILERS</p>
            </blockquote>





	give back a hungrier stare

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. "maveth" is the hebrew word for death that fitz mentions. now it's the name of the monolith. to me, anyway.
> 
> 2\. this doesn't take into account anything kree-related, like it might (???) on the show. 
> 
> 3\. unbeta'd. be gentle.

 

i.

The wind tastes ugly, violent in a way that outsizes its nature but still strikes fear into her spine just the same. She wants to collapse on the ground but there’s a reason she’s made it here so long. There’s a reason.

Her watch was damaged in her strange arrival here, so she keeps time by the even shift of the moon, back and forth, always dark but also always constant.

It’s been 153 days.

Who knows how long it’s been back home.

 

ii.

The entire planet, it seems, rumbles at times, with a pattern and frequency she can’t truly decipher. She keeps track of each incident with a crude pictorial system, marking days by how ominous the rumbling feels.

She has a hunch, and she doesn’t know where it comes from exactly or why it came to her at all, that it isn’t random—it isn’t just nature taking its course. It means something. Something big.

 

iii.

Maveth sits impassively every time she returns to it. The flora around it must stink with her scent, so she never stays for long.

It’s strange though—the creatures haven’t been chasing her as hard lately. The environment hasn’t been spitting and hissing at her as much. Perhaps she’s assimilated. Perhaps—

Sometimes, for a brief moment, Jemma thinks: _This is it. This is all that there is. I live here and I die here._

But Maveth doesn’t taunt her. Its gentle hum soothes her sharp thoughts.

She doesn’t know how she knows the monolith’s name. She just does.

 

iv.

One day she’s passing the clearing where Maveth sits and it surges in a way she’s only seen once before. The rumbling is heavy, so heavy and dark, the stuff of earthquakes she’s heard about from other people.

It feels like Skye, almost.

She sprints towards it and goes smashing headfirst into its heart.

And she’s spat out in a warehouse.

On Earth.

In the middle of a firefight.

But all sound ceases as Maveth calms itself, as people—friends and enemies—stop with shock at what they’ve seen.

The creature, an Inhuman, she assumes, that leans over her is wild looking, angry and grotesque above her prone form. But somehow Jemma feels no fear. She sits up and the creature leans away. She stands and the creature backs up. She’s looking at him and that makes him docile, muted. And it makes her inflate with steadiness. 

Maybe she has a head injury. Maybe this is a trick of the light, reality suspended into some weird thing that only she could imagine.

“Jemma,” Skye breathes behind her, and it breaks her concentration. She looks back as the Inhuman roars back to life and swipes at her, knocking her hard across the room.

And everything goes black.

 

v.

The darkness is punctuated by whispers as she comes back to consciousness. She can’t feel a breeze, but for a moment the low light makes her think she dreamt it all, that she’s still on her planet, who knows how far away.

All of a sudden she gasps awake, and the dull roar of her own head makes her feel sick. The whispering stops.

“You have a concussion,” he says. “One broken rib and two bruised ones.”

“Go back to sleep,” she says.

Jemma digests the information lightly and does as she’s told.

 

vi.

The pain in her gut is just sort of inconvenient, because nothing’s going to stop her from prowling the length of her cage. There’s so much energy inside her—no, not energy— _purpose._ She can’t remember where the feeling started but it consumes her focus. It makes her sharp and bitter, like she’s drowning in adrenaline.

She remembers watching Skye back here, feeling sick that she had to stay quarantined behind the glass when all she wanted to do was pull her close. But Skye seems more than content to leave her where she is, arms crossed, watching her with mostly appraising eyes. Mostly.

This is the second time Jemma’s been behind the glass. Second time touched by something alien. Second time treated by her team with pity and fear and hopelessness.

But this is the first time she’s felt something more than that.

Fitz watches her hungrily, Skye mournfully; and everyone else avoids her gaze.

 

vii.

“Let me out, Fitz.”

Her voice is raspy and unused, and the words come out like a growl.

“You know I can’t. They’re still testing for—”

“I don’t care.”

Fitz swallows hard.

“You of all people know,” he starts slowly. “That it’s not safe to let you out until we’re sure that you aren’t contaminated with anything.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she says, brusque and stubborn in a familiar way. “I just need to get out of here.”

His heart breaks right on his face. “What do you mean?”

“Maveth chose me for a reason, Fitz.” She swallows hard. “It changed me for a reason.”

Suddenly Fitz looks guilty, so she continues. “I _remember_ what I did back there. I controlled him. The Inhuman that’s been chasing Skye and Lincoln. I made him stop somehow.”

“They said that the monolith was a weapon to be used against the Inhumans,” Fitz admits, and Jemma nods.

“That’s what I am now,” she says quietly.

She’s had a lot of time to think in here.

“We can fix this, Jemma,” he says. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t. She doesn’t care about being fixed. She has a job to do.

“Let me out, Fitz.”

He’s so fragile. He has been for such a long time. His forehead presses to the glass, both hands too. “I want to.”

She presses a hand forward to match his. Part of her shamefully longs for the time before he looked at her like this, if only to spare them both the pain of it.

“I really want to,” Fitz mumbles. “But you might hurt Skye.”

She pulls her hand away. “What? Of course I wouldn’t!”

“Jemma, the first time you did it it was by accident! You can’t control it.”

“I can!” She protests. “I can figure it out if you just let me—”

“No.”

She turns her back on him and closes her eyes. She can feel it humming, she can feel it telling her to get out into the world and _start_.

“You took samples, didn’t you?” she asks.

“What?”

“Samples of the particulate from the planet I was on.” She already knows the answer. They swabbed her, stuck her, sponged her, even took a lock of her hair.

“Yeah. Erm, I mean, one of the lab techs did, but yeah.”

“Can you leave? I’m going to take a shower.”

Fitz is easy to fluster, and he trusts her. So he backs out of the room frantically, gracelessly, and leaves her alone.

He’ll realize his mistake later. Maveth is constant and present, ready to take her wherever she’s needed next.

Fitz says she has no control. She’s always been a fast learner.

 

viii.

If she closes her eyes, she can picture him. She stared that Inhuman in the eyes, so now she can see him wherever he goes.

She follows him to another Inhuman, a teenage girl whose mother told her to take fish oil to help with her periods. The poor thing.

The suburban house is immaculate, and without a car in the driveway she knows that she’s the only thing standing between this girl and a hole in her chest. But there’s not really a training manual for this, so she rings the doorbell.

The girl, Lily, unlocks the chain on the door and opens it a crack. “Can I help you?”

“Hi,” Jemma breathes, and then she lets her mouth run free. “This is going to sound really weird, but my name is Jemma Simmons, I’m an agent with SHIELD, and you’re in danger.”

The blood drains Lily’s face. The girl thinks she’s talking to a crazy person. Well, she’s not entirely wrong.

“Um,” she says. “I think you have the wrong house.”

“No, please!” Jemma says, sticking her foot in the door before the girl can close it. But before Lily can panic, a window smashes loudly somewhere in the house.

With Lily distracted, Jemma pushes the door open wide and stands between girl and the seven-foot beast stalking through the house. But he takes her by surprise, coming at them from the side, knocking Jemma out of the way once again and sending her skittering across the hardwood floor.

Lily shrieks, and all of a sudden flames burst from her hands. The Inhuman jerks back, but Lily doesn’t notice. She just stares down at them in horror.

Pain rips through Jemma’s injured ribs once again, but she scrambles back up to her feet and goes running towards him with enough momentum to push him through the open door and onto the front lawn. The Inhuman growls at her, only temporarily displaced, but Jemma keeps walking towards him, locking eyes as best she can with her heart in her throat.

He starts to waver.

“Stop this,” Jemma commands. His claws uselessly at the air, trying to swipe a hole in the universe to disappear through. Jemma’s seen that trick before. She’s been a part of it. It’s not happening again. “You will not hurt her. You will not hurt anyone anymore.”

His face relaxes.

“Now...erm…” Jemma thinks. “Go to sleep!”

He does.

And it’s just in time too, becauses Lily’s panicked shouts distract her; she turns back towards the house to see that it’s catching fire.

“Fuck,” Jemma mutters. She drops a beacon next to the sleeping Inhuman and goes jogging back towards the house. “Lily! Listen to me. You brought the fire here, but you can take it back.”

The girl is more than distraught. This is a nightmare.

“I can’t,” she sobs. “I can’t. Oh, god, what is happening to me?”

Peering through the window, Jemma can see Lily curled on the the floor, clutching herself, surrounded by fire.

]It occurs to her, briefly, that perhaps she bit off more than she could chew. Skye could probably handle this a lot better.

“Lily, you have to get out, okay? You can’t stay in there.” But the girl is surrounded. She’s totally surrounded.

She’s stranded.

Without thinking, Jemma goes hurtling back through the door, grabs the girl by the wrist and pulls her back out, through the fire and smoke, until they both collapse by the sleeping beast.

With her broken ribs and her failing lungs, this is where Jemma blacks out again.

 

ix.

This endless cycle of injury and unconsciousness and hospital rooms used to belong to people like Skye and May. Now it’s Jemma’s turn.

She’s back behind glass when she wakes up this time, although Lily’s been set up here with her own bed, various parts of her swathed in ointment and bandages. Jemma looks down at herself and sees much of her is bandaged up as well.

She groans.

Lily looks up and grins at her. “We match.”

She smiles weakly back.

Jemma’s head falls back to the pillow, and she lets her eyes do the travelling.

“Hi,” Fitz says, stepping as closely as he can without pressing himself to the glass. “You have a couple of second degree burns, the worst on your legs. Your ribs are still fucked to hell and you have roughly a million new bruises.” He recites it clearly because he knows she needs it.

“A million?” she says. “Is that a scientific term now?”

He shrugs. “How do you feel?”

The insane thrum, the urge to get out, isn’t gone—not really. But it’s more gentle, like it’s following the course of her own veins now, rather than tearing through her bones.

Maveth is still out there, ready to answer her call again. But it’s not pulling her along by a rope.

And Skye’s not looking at her with anxiety. She’s smiling. Jemma forgets to respond to Fitz’s question as she watches Skye. 

“Looks like you and I are a team now,” Skye says, sidling up to the glass.

“Oh, yeah?” Jemma rasps. “Why’s that?”

“Look around,” Skye murmurs, twinkling. “We’re the muscle.”

It’s insane. It’s completely insane. But it’s true.

So Jemma smiles. 

 


End file.
